He was deeply troubled and distressed in his spirit to an extent where he said, I have to eat just enough to stay healthy and alive. That's what he was doing. Because if it was really something spiritual about just eating vegetables and drinking water, then like vegans would be the most godly people ever. But instead, all they can ever talk about is the fact that they're vegans. You know what I'm saying?

Like, my apologies if anybody's a vegan in here. I highly doubt it because you haven't already told me. You know, they usually, that's the first thing. They're like, hi, I'm so and so, I'm a vegan. You're like, oh, great, okay, now I can't like cook or enjoy life forever around you.

So anyway, and I would say that to a vegan's face, by the way, if they told me they were vegan, I'd be like, ah, but I can tell most of you because like, you had energy to stand up, so I know you're not a vegan. They don't like it when you say that. They're like, no, there's plenty of protein and nuts and spinach. Okay, cool. So anyway, I'm a little punchy.

I've been gone a few weeks. I'm just letting it all out. So Daniel sees this vision. He doesn't understand it. He sets himself to understanding it.

He implores God to show him an answer to it. And what does he see? Did you notice the description of the person that he sees? And did it sound familiar? White robe, golden sash, eyes like fire, voice like the multitudes, or voice like the waters, depending on your translation.

Now if you've read Revelation chapter one and seen where John meets the risen, resurrected and ascended Christ, it sounds like almost identical language. Now the question is, and you can go to books, you can go online, you can go to scholarly websites and all this stuff and say, is this Jesus? And you'll get people very politely arguing back and forth in these little forums where there's people that have way more knowledge than me. And I read everything they had to say and I like pushed it all aside and I said, God, what is this? Because if, if that's Jesus that shows up.

Now, I'm not saying Jesus like Jesus born of the Virgin Mary as a human being. I'm saying the pre incarnate Christ, before he was made flesh, he still existed from eternity past. If you read John chapter one, you see this. He was with the Father always. He was with the Father.

Nothing in like the whole creation doesn't exist without Jesus. So Jesus has been involved in all of this. Jesus has always existed. There are times where Jesus shows up in the Old Testament, times to a person, but he appears as a human being in some way. I believe the man that spoke with Abraham, that had two angels with him was Jesus.

When he says, I'm going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, I'm going to give you a name, an offspring, a people, a land, I believe that is the pre incarnated Jesus Christ, or what we would call the second member of the Trinity because he hadn't been given the name Jesus yet. But nevertheless, we read that and then we would say, well, how could it be Jesus if he is struggling against this, this demon prince of Persia? I think there's two different things happening here. I think when you go down from there, you get down, like from verse 10 on down, and it looks like it's a. It's an angel that's taking over.

John sees Jesus and it actually saps the. I'm sorry, not John. Daniel sees Jesus and it saps the strength out of him. John had a similar response in Revelation when he's taken to heaven and sees Jesus. And so I believe what's happening here is Daniel sees Jesus and he just, he has no category for this.

He's never seen anything like this. He's been talking to the angel Gabriel in the past couple chapters. By the way, if you were reading in Daniel by the way, most of us stop around chapter seven in Daniel when we're reading it because all the weird stuff happens after that. Like, we're cool with him saying, like, hey, King, here's what your dream means. You're going to eat grass like a cow for seven years.

And like, oh, you know, your son or grandson's going to, like, he sees writing on the wall and like, you're going to die tonight. You know, all this stuff. Like, we're fine with those passages. The lion's den, the, the fiery furnace. Those parts of Daniel are cool.

They make it in the children's Bible story books and kids lessons. We don't want to get into these prophecies and all that stuff. It's too deep. I get it. But here we are.

So Daniel, he. He. He falls flat on his face. He has no strength left after seeing Christ in all of his glory. And so then Gabriel comes around verse 10 and in this chapter, and he's like, hey, get up.

He's like, I can't, I can't, I can't even, like, I can't even listen to you talk right now. I think it's probably all the water and vegetables. But anyway, he's out of strength. You know, it only takes three weeks as a vegan to lose all your strength apparently. So.

I'm just kidding. It's a terrible joke. So anyway, I really hope nobody's actually like made a move to be a vegan. I would almost feel bad about saying that right now. But seriously, steak is so tasty and bacon goes with it.

Well, everything. So this also when, when Daniel sees Christ in this vision, he has companions around him, but they don't receive the vision. They don't see Christ like he does, they don't hear him like he does. This is the same as the apostle Paul at the time with Saul in Acts chapter 9. He sees Jesus, the risen, resurrected and ascended Christ.

He sees him on the road to Damascus where he's about to do evil towards the saints of Christ. And he meets Jesus, his companions. They see a light, they hear what they think is just rumbling thunder or some weird thing of nature. But Saul says, sees and hears and talks with Jesus Christ. So this sounds a lot like other times we've seen the appearance of Christ, this matches with him.

And then like, what is that for? What is the purpose of that? I think in order to know what Daniel knew, to hear what Daniel's about to hear, he needs to be absolutely convinced in the supremacy of Jesus Christ for the things that the angel, I believe Gabriel is about to reveal to him in the next few verses, in the next chapter, Daniel, Daniel is going to need to know that there is a sovereign Lord who is ruler and king over all. And by all means he gets that. Amen.

He sees that. And so God had, as soon as Daniel applied himself to this, God had begun sending the response, the answer. But Daniel didn't know this yet. And for three weeks he maintains this habit or ritual of just seeking God. How many times have you been there in life?

I know you haven't done it right, like three weeks. Like we, we just can't get there, can we? We just, for some reason we're so like set and complacent and we've been taught these like drive thru prayers, you know, and all this stuff. We're like, we're just like, quick, give me my answer. I want to get out of here and get gone.

I went through a drive thru yesterday. We came home, there's no food in the house. I come home, I started up the car. That's Been sitting for, for several weeks in the driveway. I go, we went to Sunny's.

I'm going to get some food. My window won't roll down. It's like it just broke just sitting there. I'm like, ah, I can't even go to the drive thru right. You know, this is terrible.

So we want drive thru prayers. Like we just want it to, to, to happen right now. We want our answer to prayer right now. And when there's a little hiccup, we're like, oh no, you know, my, my window won't roll down or oh no, God didn't answer my prayer. This is annoying.

You mean I'm going to have to put some spiritual work into getting my answer? Yeah. Daniel puts three weeks of spiritual work into getting his answer. And what he finds out is this angel finally shows up to talk to him. I believe Gabriel, he shows up to speak to him and he says, I was sent immediately when you began praying.

The answer from God came immediately. But he says, I was detained by the Prince of Persia.

Okay, if you're like, you either have the answer already and you're tracking with me, or you're like, what's he talking about? This is an angel. Who's this Prince of Persia? Here's the truth. There is a spiritual realm all around us.

When we pray, we don't believe that it went like light years away to meet God. We believe that the presence of the Holy Spirit of God is here with us. Amen. We believe that the presence of Christ, if you're a believer in Jesus, you've given your life and your allegiance and your devotion to him. You've been saved by his blood, you've been redeemed.

We believe that Christ dwells in us. He dwells in you. And so then when we see all these things, it's kind of like, oh, that's a spiritual presence, not necessarily a physical one. So there is a spiritual realm. We don't have a problem believing that.

Right, True. Okay. But then we say, well, wait a second, it seems like there's evil in this world. There's evil in this world, then those evil forces are around us as well. There's an evil force at work in this world and it's opposed to the things of God.

In fact, what God did was God had created the world, humankind. He created us. And he created us for his joy and for his purposes. And he created it for us to enjoy. But Satan always tries to make a counterfeit of what God makes.

God makes something. Satan tries to make the opposite thing and like an evil version of it. And what Satan does, like, even when you read in the book of Revelation, you see, there's the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But then there's like this evil, like, parody trinity of like Satan and the beast and the witnesses or all these different things. And he's trying to mimic what God has and what God is, but it's always based in evil.

And Satan is always trying to do one thing. In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that Satan came to steal, kill and destroy. Now that's Satan's. What we call his M.O. is modus operandi.

This is how he operates. Jesus says in the second part of that verse, though in John 10:10, he says, but the Son of man came to give life and life more abundantly. See, Jesus is coming to give life and he promises us ways that we can receive that life. Belief in him, serving him, loving him. He says, you do these things, you receive eternal life.

Now. And I'm not trying to say you work your salvation. I'm not saying you earn it. I'm just saying, like, these are the ways in which your salvation works out. Satan, his way is to say he promises things.

He says, oh, I'm going to give you pleasures and joy and success and wealth and fame and all these things. And yet it's a parody. It's an evil parody of what God is doing. And it's always set up to overthrow God. See, Satan was created as an angel.

He's called the. The. Oh, I forget what his name was. The. Yeah, Lucifer.

But I mean, angel of light. It was, wasn't it? Yeah, he was originally called an angel of light. Like he was created beautifully long before earth was made and creation was made. And yet he turned on God.

He wanted the glory that God had for himself. He thought that he was worthy of the things that are only belonging to God. And so ever since then, he's been trying to snake that away. Night, get my pun. Snake it away.

He's the serpent. Anyway, okay, so he's been trying to snake that stuff away from God and he's been trying to steal what only belongs to God. And so Satan will do anything. And he has angels that followed him in his rebellion against God. And so those are what we would call his demonic forces, his demons.

And the demonic forces of Satan, the demons that followed him, that, that, that serve him, are working to do the same things that he is working to do. To steal, to kill and destroy. Simply put, the first thing that Satan wants is for you to be dead. Apart from salvation in Jesus Christ. That's his number one goal.

Because the more people that die that don't know Jesus Christ, he feels like he's winning. He's killing God's children, the people that God created. Satan is destroying them. Short of getting you dead, he wants to steal from you. He wants to destroy you.

And he's working overtime to do it. And you know what? Sometimes he thinks, well, I'm not too worried because, oh, they're in church and they're convinced that they're okay. They've gotten themselves in a place where they think, oh, I'm doing just enough. I'm just enough of a follower of Christ that, that I'm good.

Jesus said, there will be people on that last day of judgment that'll say, lord, Lord, didn't we fill in the blank? Didn't we serve people? Didn't we love people? Didn't we attend church? Didn't we give tithes and offerings?

Didn't we do all these things in your name? He says, away from me because I didn't know. You see, Job in the Old Testament, Job goes through this whole, whole thing where he suffers all the loss of all these things. And finally he goes through the torment of his wife and his friends, telling him that he messed up or that he should curse God or all these things. Finally he goes through all of that, and at the end of it, when God reveals himself to him, he said, I had heard of you before, now I know you.

I didn't just hear of you. I know you. Now, see, I don't want to be caught on Judgment Day where Jesus says, I never knew you. You served me, you preached, you studied the word and preached it and you led prayers. You did all these things, but I didn't know you.

That is not a place that I want to end up. But Satan tries to convince us that, oh, you're good enough, you're fine, and you don't need to worry about it. Satan will try to entice you with things like riches, popularity, power, pleasure, acclaim, fame, etc. So what he wants to do is he wants to get you unhappy with the things that God has given you. Think of King David when he had an affair with Bathsheba.

And later, when God finally confronts him, is like a year later, he speaks through the prophet Nathan. And he said, I gave you everything you needed. If you needed more, I would have given you more. Like, if the wives you had weren't enough, I would have given you more. But you went and took somebody else's wife.

Did anybody, like, pay attention to that? That concert this week, the Coldplay concert, where there was a couple, like, well, they weren't a couple. It was a CEO of a company. And then his. This is funny to me because it's an hr, like the HR boss, you know, the exact person that you're, you know, not supposed to do these things with.

I mean, especially. It wasn't his wife. He, like, they were both married. So it's really sad. But the funny part was how the Internet, like, just everything was just jokes yesterday all over Facebook and all these things about, like, you know, what not to do.

And I'm looking at all that and like, yeah, I laughed at a bunch of those jokes. But I realized that some of the things Satan does is he tries to say, hey, you can just have this affair with this person. It's not going to hurt anything. You're going to be gone, you're out of town. Your spouse won't know.

Just have that affair. You'll find joy and pleasure and fulfillment in that. See, what he's doing is he's taking and making an evil parody of marriage that God created. One man, one woman, married together for life. That's the intention and goal of God.

That's what he designed marriage to be. So what does Satan do? He tries to destroy marriage. The saddest part of that whole thing, besides the brokenness in that relationship, is this guy gets up and he does his immediate apology the next day, blames everyone else, doesn't take ownership for himself. And it's like, really?

That's what it's come down to in your life? And yet we're not so much different. There's so many other things, though, like. Like power. I mean, people chase after power because Satan offers them, like, this thing.

He says, if you get into this position of power, then it's going to be great and you're going to find your joy and fulfillment in that. And you get there and it's never quite enough. Or you realize you have to lie and cheat people to stay there and to maintain that. And I'm not just talking about, like, senators, you know, like, it's all kinds of other positions of power, too, by the way. I make jokes about them a lot.

I vote for them still and hope for the best. Presidents, senators, all those things. And. And I try to research who I vote for and try to say, okay, maybe this is as close as we're going to get to, like, somebody that's actually Godly in the way they run their lives. And then sometimes I'm like, we didn't make it very long, did we?

But it's a good run while it lasted, you know? And then sometimes I say, well, maybe there's more going on that I don't know about. But what I do realize is happening is that behind all these pulls and pushes for power and behind all these affairs, the, the, all this other stuff behind the, like, the gender confusion. I mean, look at that. You've got, you got people that are saying, well, I don't think my, my plumbing matches my who I believe I am.

You know, like, I was born, I was assigned this gender at my birth, but I really feel like I'm this one instead. And then they just start making up more than 2 genders and all this stuff. And you look at that and you're like, what is that? Is God creating them? It says he created the male and female.

And then Satan says, well, how can I twist that into a way that I'll take people who, who have something legitimately that feels wrong in themselves, But I'm going to say that it's this thing, and they're going to chase after that and find themselves unable to reproduce, unable to really find true joy and fulfillment in their life because they've found a solution that isn't the true solution to the problem which they have. Satan always is updating his methods, but his MO has always been the same. Steal, kill, and destroy. Now, I want to say something here, and I know we're closing in on that time, but I don't, I don't want to stop now. This needs to be said.

Somebody who has received Christ in them, we'll call it, a born again Christian cannot be possessed by an unclean or an evil spirit. You cannot be demon possessed. If you have Christ in you, you can't. Jesus says so. He says, there's no way that light and dark can live in the same place.

Jesus is the light. You can't have that. And so I want you to be sure of that. But some of you might say, well, Pastor Nick, surely you don't believe in demons anymore. Can't we explain that away?

Oh, it was mental health and depression. Oh, it was physical infirmities. Oh, it was this or that or. Hmm, no, no, no. Many times the answer might be a medical answer.

Many times the answer might be a psychological answer. But so many times what's going on in somebody's life is truly being possessed by a demon. And it doesn't always Manifest as, like, raging mad, crazy, foaming at the mouth and all those things. There are many times where somebody you might meet is. Is controlled or possessed by an evil and unclean spirit.

And the truth of the matter is, Jesus gave us power and authority over that. We had a discussion in the car a few days ago about what it means when we say things like, I pray this in the name of Jesus. That means the power and authority that the name of Jesus carries, because his name is the name above all other names. Because he has conquered over Satan, sin, and death, there is power in his name. And Jesus said to his followers, he says, all authority on heaven, in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Now go therefore into all the world. In other words, he's saying, I've received that authority. Now you have the ability to do it. There's this story in the book of Acts where there's this. Where Paul's been going around the apostle Paul, and he's been driving out demons and all these things and preaching the word of God.

And then there's these guys that are sons of a high priest named Sceva, which just sounds like a really skeezy name anyway, right? And so Ska is this guy, and he has seven sons, and they decide they want in on the action. So they go and they find somebody is possessed by a demon. And they say, I adjure you by the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches to leave this man. Now, the guy that had the demons in him laughs at them, says, oh, Jesus, I know.

Now, this is the demon speaking through the man. He says, jesus, I know. Of course he does. What does the scripture say? At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, jesus is Lord.

The scripture says that even the demons believe in Jesus. And they shudder like they know him. They know who he is. And they know that eventually his name triumphs over Satan and the demons. But so anyway, this guy says, oh, Jesus, I know Paul.

I've heard of who are you? And he beats them up so bad that they end up being stripped of their clothing and they're bleeding, and they leave the fight naked and bleeding. Now, I heard a preacher talking about this, and he said, if you start a fight with pants and end a fight without pants, you lost. Like you were not the winner of that fight. You know what I'm saying?

And so I thought that was pretty good. If you're in Christ, if Christ is in you, you cannot be possessed by an unclean spirit. However. This is a big however. I've known Many Christians that have been oppressed by demons.

And here's the difference between possession and oppression. You see, you might be following Christ. You're a believer in Christ, you're following him. You're trying to walk in his ways. And yet it feels like at every turn there's something dogging you, something eating at you.

You feel your anger rising. You feel a sense of just never ending depression, a sense of gloom. You have doubt about who God says he is. You have lack of faith. You have fears over things.

You have all these things that are, that are just attacking you. Last week, Gail was preaching. It was her first sermon, preaching, and she, she preached that and she talked about a fear that she had, like a claustrophobia that she had for years, and it plagued her. I believe that's demonic oppression. It's something that's inhuman, that is just going after you and gnawing at you.

By the way, you're probably not important enough for Satan's direct attention, right? But boy, does he have a whole lot of minions that'll do his work. He has demons that are always going after you and they're giving their marching orders to try to steal, kill and destroy in your life. And so for her, it was a sphere of small spaces. But finally God gave her this, like, conquering over that.

She went down a slide that went down like in a curl and it was enclosed and she did not like it, but she did it again because God relieved her of that fear. And, and she's no longer scared of these small spaces. Praise God for that. I believe there are times where we are oppressed by demons. And so many times, by the way, if somebody is actually not in Christ and they're possessed by a demon.

One of the things I want to tell you is that that didn't happen without their willingness. We think, oh my, how, how sad for them. Truly it is. But they had a willingness in their spirit to allow this inside of them. They were playing with things.

They're dabbling with the occult. They're dabbling with Wicca, white witchcraft, they call it. Oh, it's just good. It just helps people. They're messing around with, with things like, just things that are, that are absolutely against the people and will of God.

They're having relationships and affairs that they should have never had. They're doing all these things and they're just allowing. They're listening to music and listen. I've listened to music with bad words and all this. I'm just, I'm not trying to sound like some Fuddy duddy.

I'm just like, listen, There are. There are musicians and songs that are designed to open you up to evil and the occult. And there are people that are messing around with these things and is opening the door to allow an evil spirit to possess them. And so it's only by the name of Jesus Christ that that can be kicked out and removed. But there are Christians who are possessed by Christ.

We call him our Lord and Savior. And yet you're doing things that are allowing demonic oppression. It's opening a door not all the way open for them to come in and live inside of you, but it's opening the door for them to just get a little foothold and to start chipping away at you. For some people, it's drugs, it's too much alcohol. For some people, it's some type of relationship that might not be across that line, but it's still a bad relationship.

It might be that you're just like your anger and your bitterness towards other people and you won't let it go. It might be all kinds of any number of things where you're just allowing little doorways in, little slivers of darkness to come in there and attack you over and over. And it might not ever pull you away from Jesus Christ, but it sure is destroying your fullness of the presence of Christ in your life because you're allowing these things in. And the only way for those to be gone is to confess your sin and. And to command those evil spirits to leave in the name of Jesus Christ and to remove their works and effects with them.

But I told you that I got down to this point in Daniel 10, the first couple verses of Daniel 11, where I was looking at it, and I said, so what does this have to do with us? The first thing is I recognize, and I'll wrap up within the next couple minutes here, I promise. The first thing I recognize is that our battle, I believe it's Ephesians 6:13, I think, says is our battle isn't against flesh and blood, but against principalities and forces in the spiritual world of darkness that is working against us. That's somebody's alarm. That's fun.

Whoever bumped their purse, that's yours, so. Or. Or somebody's car's getting stolen. I don't know. Hope you've got great insurance.

Maybe you'll get a better one. You know, nothing. Okay, cool. I'm the only one that thinks that way. Sorry.

So Ephesians 6:12 is that verse, by the way. And so what we see is that there's this spiritual battle going on, but we also see it manifested in earthly ways. I call it an air war and a ground war. See, there's the air war, there's the things that we can't see around us. You can't see the air, you know it exists.

There's a spiritual battle around us and you can't see it, but you can see the effects of it. And that's the ground war. Now a lot of times it's been called the culture war. And they say, why is the church always against culture? Oh, we're not against culture.

Culture is a great thing. Some of the evil things that are taking root in our modern culture is where the problem is. And we're not fighting against people. See, too often we say, oh, well, this person with this lifestyle, this person doing these things, this person with these beliefs, that's the person that I'm against. That's my enemy.

No, they're not. We love that person the same way Christ loves us. The thing is, some of the things that are going on in our world are very much influenced and inspired by demonic forces. And so what we see that's going on here with Daniel and the angel that's speaking to him says, I was detained by the Prince of Persia. What he's saying is that there is like, let's call it a chief demon.

There's like a high ranking demon that is assigned to a kingdom is a high ranking demon that is influencing what happens in that nation. And don't think America doesn't have the same thing going on. Don't think that there aren't evil demonic forces that are working in our country to try to steer things for evil rather than for good. We're set up in a unique place in this country. We have a great foundation that allows us, us right here in this room to meet and to proclaim the things of God and to work to serve people in the name of Jesus Christ.

And yet don't think that we're immune from being oppressed by satanic forces. And so they had the same thing going here in the kingdom in which Daniel lived as a Jewish exile. He's living in the kingdom of Persia now. And so the evil prince of Persia was trying to prevent this message from getting to Daniel. But nevertheless, the message came with the help of the Prince Michael, who was, he says, Daniel's prince or the Israelites prince.

He was the one that was fighting on their behalf, the godly angel that's fighting against the demons. And this angel Gabriel says, this he says, in the first year of Darius, the Mede, the Medes and the Persians was the kingdom. He says, I stood to strengthen him and to provide protection for him. Darius was not a Christian. He was not a believer.

He was not a good and godly man. And yet this angel of God was working to protect him because God had plans for how they would provide for the rebuilding. As we studied in Nehemiah, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the temple, the city walls and gates, God can even use ungodly men and women as his agents to effect change for the people of God. So my goal for you in this, closing this up is to say this. There's a spiritual battle and there's a cultural struggle that's going on around us.

And what we have to do is, first of all, be aware of it. We don't say, oh, that doesn't exist. That's not real. We believe that it is going on all around us and that what we are doing is we are standing on our feet or kneeling on our knees to say, lord, you're at work. You're the one that reigns supreme in this world.

And I'm going to follow you. And I'm going to choose to remember every day that. That you are in charge and that as dark as the darkness seems, the light is so much brighter. Don't forget where we are and where we're standing and who is fighting for us. Amen.

Sam.